


The World Beneath the World

by magicalmolly



Category: the starless sea - Fandom
Genre: F/M, M/M, Romance, erin morgenstern, the starless sea
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-19 04:49:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29994156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicalmolly/pseuds/magicalmolly
Summary: Following the events of The Starless Sea, Zachary, Dorian, and Simon begin to sail the Starless Sea on Eleanor's ship throughout the World Beneath the World. They soon learn that the stories in 'Fortunes and Fables' are true, and there are still so many secrets the harbor kept hidden.Mirabel, The Keeper, and Rhyme must choose how to live their lives now that the story they knew for so long has ended, and a new one has begun.Kat is still on her search for Zachary Ezra Rawlins, but she must navigate a new harbor and find her way to the Starless Sea.
Relationships: Dorian/Zachary Ezra Rawlins, Eleanor/Simon Keating, mirabel/the keeper
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	The World Beneath the World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EpsilonTheZebra (softboy_punx)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/softboy_punx/gifts), [mar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mar/gifts).



The stories were soaked in honey when they found them. They were laying out in the cold as the snow stuck to them, like powdered sugar on a freshly baked pastry. The hunters nearly missed them. They had their sights set elsewhere. But the paper of one particularly compelling love story about the man and a woman in an inn at the end of the world stuck to one of the hunter’s boots. 

She knew the story, everyone in the city did. But the other hunter traveling with her—her lover—was not from her city so he did not know the story. 

So the first hunter pried the story off her shoe and licked away the honey to read it to her lover.

_ Are there more?  _ He asked her. And she dug up the rest and was careful not to tear them as she peeled their sticky honey centers apart. The rest of the stories were foreign to both hunters, but when she had barely begun to read the final one he reached out and snatched the story from her fingers.

_ What’s wrong?  _ The woman hunter asked, taking in her lover’s horrified expression.  _ This story, I know it.  _ The woman took the story from her lover and read through it.  _ Oh, this one, everyone knows this fairytale. _

_ No,  _ the lover said,  _ it’s not a fairytale. It’s real. _

The woman did not understand her lover’s words. The Owl King was nothing more than a myth.

* * *

“I don’t understand,” Dorian says as he paces back and forth across the deck. “How can he be here?”   


Zachary shrugs. “How can any of us be here?”

Dorian gives Zachary a pointed look and Zachary smiles back at him.

“Don’t go getting all philosophical on me now.”   


Zachary smiles again and Dorian’s own smile cracks like an egg.

“Do you think she’ll be okay?” Zachary asks.

Dorian’s smile falters. He glances toward the far side of the small ship where their captain is looking out over the Starless Sea. She’s sucking in lungfuls of haunted air. Wondering if she fills herself up with enough foreign ghosts will it someone erase her own. 

Dorian looks back at Zachary. “I don’t know. You read their story, they were star crossed lovers separated by time. Maybe this is the happy ending their readers hoped they would get.”   


“I think we’re their only readers. Well, and maybe Rhyme.”

“Just because a story isn’t widely known doesn’t mean the characters in it aren’t important.”   


“I know they are,” Zachary insists. “But they’re not characters in that book anymore than you or I were in  _ Sweet Sorrows.”  _

Dorian stiffens a bit at the mention of the Zachary’s book. He thinks of it down below decks, surely already lost amongst the many, many tomes of their Captain’s collection. 

“Besides,” Zachary continues, “maybe too much time has passed for it to be the same.”   


“No time would be too great for lovers like them.”   


Zachary studies his lover, the way the moon casts down on him. The way Zachary hears bees buzzing when he looks at him. The way that the new heart in his chest beats to the rhythm of a love song from long ago whenever Dorian’s eyes meet his own. 

“How long would you have waited for me?”

Dorian doesn’t hesitate for a moment in his answer. “Forever.”   
  


* * *

Simon wakes in a small bed in a room he does not know, drenched in moonlight he has not seen in many, many, many years. He sits up in bed and smells coffee. His tongue is heavy with the taste of honey. He can hear waves roaring in his ears, still. He can feel the stories in the air.

He gets up, pulls on his boots and heads out to seek answers to the many questions tumbling around in his head.

_ Where is he? _

_ When is he? _   


_ Who is he? _   
  


* * *

The Captain makes her way over to where the two lovers are perched on the far side of the ship. She was one half of a pair of lovers once. It was brief, much shorter than the short time the two of them before her have had with one another. She’s jealous. Because Zachary and Dorian have spent their short time going through doors together; opening them freely, stepping through boldly. They have broken the rules of the story and still found their way back to each other. And they did it in hours. The Captain has been trying for years.

The man below deck has been trapped for years in his trying; so long so that he forgot what it was he was trying to find. The stories all blended together into one long epic that he couldn’t make sense of. It was like reading a poem in a foreign language—he knew it was beautiful, but he did not know what it said. 

He has possibly been trying for longer than the Captain has. The sea swirls time around in loops, and patterns, and messes so complicated that they make the room with the painted doors and the burned place outside, look as simple as a game of hangman.

“Do you think he’s still sleeping?” The Captain asks.

Zachary looks at her with eyes so empathetic it almost burns.

“Maybe. You should go check.”

“Yes,” Dorian says, “he’s sleeping in your bed so you’re going to have to face it eventually.”

Zachary elbows Dorian. The Captain pretends not to notice.

“You’re right.” She turns to leave but Zachary stops her, reaching out and gently touching her wrist. She hadn’t realized how long it had been since she’d been touched. Touched like this. The way someone who cares about someone touches them. She looks at the son of the fortune teller, the boy with Fate’s heart beating in his chest. He feels important. She looks at his lover.  _ They both do. _

“We need to be able to call you something and I know your name isn’t really Eleanor. Do you want us to call you Lenore?”

She shakes her head immediately. “That name was never mine. It was theirs.”   


Zachary and Dorian share a brief, uneasy glance.

“Okay, something else then.”

“Athena,” Dorian says. Zachary and Not-Eleanor both look at him. “Goddess of Wisdom,” Dorian explains.

“Oh please,” Zachary says. “You’re just thinking of her because of all the owl symbolism.”   


“No,” Dorian protests.

“There  _ is _ a lot of owl symbolism,” Not-Eleanor says.

“Ostara, then,” Dorian says. “Goddess of Spring. In ancient Southern German folklore it was said she often took the form of a rabbit.”   


Not-Eleanor smiles at him. “I told you. I don’t need to be a rabbit anymore.”

“Okay then,” Dorian says, racking his brain of his mythology knowledge. “Mnemosyne then. Greek Goddess of storytelling. Mother of the muses.”

“That’s a bit of a mouthful,” Not-Eleanor says.

Dorian’s shoulders slump a bit.

“Just Muse then,” Zachary says.

And to the lovers’ relief, Not-Eleanor smiles.

“Muse,” she repeats. The boys smile back at her. “You can call me Muse.”


End file.
